


take my hand, we'll leave together

by griners



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M, honestly though, minor seriker, the real otp is making a comeback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 21:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3912058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griners/pseuds/griners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fabio starts counting the inches between them when a ruler is too thick to slide between the crooks of their elbows and the bones on their hips. 5, 4, 3, he mouths, and Cristiano bumps into him, and he feels something unreasonably strong scrapping at his knee, the back of his head, his lower back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take my hand, we'll leave together

When Fabio is young, all he ever sees is red. He’s raised as a die-hard Benfica fan and he dreams for a long time before a balls lands on his feet. “Let’s see how good you are, son.” His father ruffles his hair and Fabio is nine and he’s eager, so eager to show.

Later, when his heart beats unbearably loud in his ear drums, when he wins a league and cups and chants, when everyone praises him like a God and says goodbye like he’s a savior, he knows, this is where it all begins.

 _Cristiano Ronaldo_ , people say, throw the name like it’s a reason, but Fabio still looks back at what’s become his home because he’s everything that football has tried robbing him of.

Sometimes all he really cares about is a ball.

 

.

 

“Fabio!” Cristiano grins wide, his features genuine, and Fabio is a little taken aback. “Finally! Thought I was gonna have to pick you up at the airport.”

Fabio thinks, idly, that maybe this is why people hate him.

“What’s it like?” he blurts out, awkwardly retracting from whatever clap-on-the-back situation they were getting into. “Here? At Real?”

Cristiano looks at him, not unreadable but impossible to read. “Amazing.” He says, not missing a beat. His eyes are filled with longing.

Fabio says “Okay,” and “I don’t care about money.”

Cristiano laughs, a quick burst, and slides his arm around his shoulders. He doesn’t say it’s absurd.

He doesn’t comment on it at all, in fact.

 

.

 

They hit it off. They’re not friends, they’re just.  They get along.

On some level, Fabio thinks they’ll never be friends, mostly because the one thing that’s brought them together is football. Or, a ball.

“This is our day off and you’re getting on a plane?” he asks, eyebrow raised in confused disapproval, and Fabio gesticulates mindlessly, doesn’t want to explain what he wouldn’t understand anyway.

“Benfica is playing.” He offers, swinging the duffle bag onto his back. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” He adds, not because Cristiano is worried, just because details have always been important to him. Speaking. Speaking has always been important to him.

“You still watch them?” a sliver of astonishment, and Fabio gives him credit for that. He was expecting mocking.

“Yeah, when I can, and, you know, they offered me a ticket.” He calls, approaching the door. “You need anything else?”

Cristiano is holding the newspapers in his hand, feeling, suddenly and unexplainably, silly. “Yeah- I mean, no. I’m sorry to make you come all the way here.”

Fabio shrugs. “No problem.” and smiles. “Spanish newspapers get a bit tiring, I get it.”

When he enters the locker rooms the next day, Cristiano’s chatting happily about Sporting’s win, a very dumbfounded Iker nodding along. There’s a new light to his eyes.

Fabio feels something tug at him from the inside.

 

.

 

Fabio hangs out with Pepe more than anyone else. Which is, at least, expected, and it grows into a blooming familiarity that Fabio appreciates, even if he’s in a different country with different languages and different habits. They kiss each other a lot here, he notes with some amount of humor.

“Fabio, come over for dinner.” There is no politeness involved, instead a warm wave of affection that has Fabio clinging to it like a vice. He thinks that even in foreign lands where the pace is quicker and the injuries are harder and the tackles are brutal, he can still find some peace.

“Sure,” he replies, a little too happy, a little too excited on the octaves of his tone, scrapping the sky during all the wrong times. Pepe doesn’t notice, and if he does, he doesn’t say anything.

Fabio gets one hell of a portuguese banquet that night. Cristiano is there, too, and Fabio finds that he doesn’t mind, not really.

“You think I walked out on Portugal, don’t you?” he asks, leaning against the fence, watching a house glow with laughter. Fabio shifts beside him, clutches his beer a little harder.

“No. No, of course not. We’re in the national team, of course you didn’t walk out.” He assures, but the foundations shake mildly, even if he doesn’t know why.

“Yeah,” he says, not knowing what else to say. He’s trying to grasp fragments of sentences he can’t actually put together, a bit lost and a bit absent, fumbling through words that won’t make sense if he says them. He’s trying to be honest, in the end. “I always feel like I’m failing them. I was better in England than I was in Portugal. I’m certainly better in Spain. Portugal is just-“ he pauses, takes a long swig of his water bottle. “It’s my starting point. And it sucks that I can’t make it more than that.”

Fabio pretends like he knows, because he can’t slide Cristiano’s boots off and place them in his own feet. He wonders how life would be if he could walk, for a day, in his shoes- probably faster and painful, mostly painful. He wonders.

“We’ve got the Euros next year,” he answers, although it doesn’t actually count as an answer, more of an understanding. Cristiano looks at him, grateful and smiling, nodding.

“Yeah. We do.” His words slower, quieter. Fabio thinks, again- this is why they hate him.

They walk back to the house, the cold air only lightly freezing their bones.

 

.

 

The beginning goes by at a reasonable speed. Soon it’s not awkward poses or relieved glances or stutters with complicated words- soon it’s not _he’s good_ , it’s _he’s really good_ and eventually _he’s the best, no doubt, no fucking doubt_.

They drive each other to training sometimes, when Fabio is late and he’s still gotta brush his teeth or when Cristiano forgets to put his gel in the morning and Fabio claims snorting-rights because it is his car, isn’t it?

Sometimes they’ll invite the guys over for dinner and sometimes they’ll only invite each other. “Portuguese bonding time,” they say, recognizable pretense lacing their excuses, but they don’t see the harm. They’re friends now, even if Fabio never saw it, never expected it, never even wished it.

“Come watch the Sporting game with me?” Cristiano asks, and Fabio laughs loudly. “Hey, come on, just this one time.”

“Fine, yeah,” he rolls his eyes, waving him off and pushing him away when he comes to kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t tell anyone about this!”

“Never!” Cristiano yells over his shoulder, leaving the locker rooms. Xabi and Iker glance at each other and then at Fabio, but he offers them nothing. He likes this. He likes it.

 

.

 

When it’s 2012 and the flag and the air and the green, red, yellow, Fabio dreams again, loud and proud, falling without a net and enjoying every second of the suffocating heat. He lives, breathes, plays like he won’t ever be able to again, and he controls, collects, gives. He gives it all.

Afterwards, when he falls to his knees, he wishes he would have kept something.

“I...” he’s learned that speaking is important to Fabio, and he tries. “We-“

“Yeah.”

They sleep with heavy hearts. Fabio hates the damn ball, sometimes. Cristiano loves it harder and hopes it won’t break.

 

.

 

“You’re like brothers.” Sergio ruffles his hair, his sunglasses far too big for his face. “It’s cute.”

“Cute?” Fabio squints, taking a bite of his sandwich. “Jesus, Sergio, we’re not _cute_ , we’re friends.”

Sergio scratches at his beard, amused. “Iker and I are cute.”

“Yes, but that’s you and Iker.”

Sergio smiles. “And you’re Fabio and Cris.”

Fabio doesn’t think he understands.

(He pretends. Often.)

 

.

 

Fabio starts counting the inches between them when a ruler is too thick to slide between the crooks of their elbows and the bones on their hips. 5, 4, 3, he mouths, and Cristiano bumps into him, and he feels something unreasonably strong scrapping at his knee, the back of his head, his lower back.

When he scores later that night, with explosions and crowds erupting in bliss and the road to the sideline swiftly crossed by seas of feet and speed, Cristiano breaks through the mass of bodies and- arms tight around him, his lips pressed against his neck, Fabio doesn’t want to feel, Fabio hugs him back, starts counting again: 0, -1, -7.

Cristiano looks at him, eyes covered so the cameras can’t see, half a second, he shows. Fabio thinks, again, this is why people hate him. Fabio thinks, _you are far too open_. Fabio thinks, _maybe if you weren’t so painfully honest, maybe if you weren’t so- you, so you- maybe I could-_

He pulls away, eventually, and with it, emptiness. Marcelo squeezes Fabio’s shoulder, and he wants to hide, really, or run, or leave.

1, 2, 7, his heart beats (heartbeats).

 

.

 

They grow so close they could be a clone, a mirror, stitched together by invisible strings that tie and tie until the rope runs out and neither can leave, neither want to leave. Fabio is drowning in possibilities he can’t quite cope with and Cristiano doesn’t step back, only pushes forward, and Fabio is able to point this out about him now- how he only walks backwards to hit something headfirst with the force of a thunder, a ball in a free kick or a leg swinging to the tempo of an applause, fast and steady and shaking with force.

Fabio can’t, admittedly, know the exact color of his eyes, but he notices how many shades darker they turn when they lose, and lighter when he scores, and lighter even when they win, incomparably brighter when they’re- they’re-

“Uhm.” _nonononono_ or _scaredscaredscaredscared_ or _tooafraidtooafraid_ and his hand rasps against the spot behind his ear, retreating slowly, and Fabio wants to grab it and put it back and kiss him urgently, forcefully, hungrily- wants to be the one pushing him back and making him forget and shine, _saysaysay_ -

“I’ll go.” because Fabio does nothing of the sort, and once Cristiano says something, he doesn’t stuff it back in his mouth and swallow it dryly.

He leaves Fabio with a whole new definition of craving.

 

.

 

It goes somewhat downhill when Fabio goes over and Irina isn’t home. “Job in England,” Cristiano says, shrugging, holding the door open for him. “Did you want something?”

Fabio blinks slowly, as if the breeze isn’t chilly enough to soothe the puffiness on his eyes from a sleepless night. “Yes. I- yes. Can I-?”

He does, stepping foot into a regular temperature hallway that doesn’t threaten an ice-burnt nose. Cristiano closes the door and walks into the living room and Fabio follows, not comprehending what rational thought is.

“Fabio!” and there’s someone holding on to his legs, a curly haired head leaning up towards him. “I knew you would come! I made daddy promise!”

Fabio fears he’s going to feel his heart drop if he looks anywhere else, so he picks Junior up onto his arms and grins, devastatingly happy, and Junior grins back, clean and euphoric, a child, a pure quality to the gap between his teeth and the way he curls his hand around Fabio’s wrist.

“He’s got your smile.” Fabio says, not thinking, not stopping, a car crash with no brakes. Cristiano doesn’t flinch but doesn’t laugh, either.

“Daddy’s been cranky.” Junior whispers conspiratorially, a spark in his dark eyes. They dart from his father to Fabio. “I think he’s mad at someone. Will you talk to him?” Fabio freezes slightly, and Cristiano decides to move from the statue-like pose he’s occupying, muttering to himself and grabbing Junior out of his arms.

“Ok, that’s enough out of you, mister.” He scolds, kissing him on the cheek and setting him down. “Want to go into your room for a bit? I’ll be right up.”

Junior looks at him adoringly, and Fabio feels something expanding inside his throat, contracting dangerously at the same time. “Can Fabs come too? He knows all the names of my teddy bears.”

Cristiano’s eyes say nothing but the truth- Fabio doesn’t know why they hate him, can’t anymore. He looks back at him and Fabio is selfish, doesn’t say anything, and Cristiano goes to put a not-so-happy Junior to bed.

When he comes back down the stairs, Fabio just- “God-“ he kisses him like he’s been waiting to for a decade, and Cristiano’s hand at the back of his neck is tighter than he can handle. He thinks, _this may be why they hate you, but this is why I lo-_

Fabio aches.

 

.

 

It’s 30 days before his wife has one of his bags by the door. “I can pack the rest.” She speaks, stretched out on the couch, matter-of-fact and calm, so calm. “Or you can pack them yourself. Or, you can stop.” She adds, switching between channels mechanically. Fabio thinks he might throw up, feels the blood drain from his face onto the pumping veins in his arms, his pulse beating hard and merciless. He shuts the door on his way out.

 

.

 

He likes to think he never had a choice, or that it was easy- maybe that would make him a better man, choosing right in the end, realizing how he was stupid and selfish and wrong, immoral, atrocious. It doesn’t, of course, but he’s learnt that believing isn’t always about exhausted bodies collapsing on green grass.

“I’m sorry,” he says, _not sorry for this but sorry for me, for having to- having to- I’m sorry for being the first to say. This._

Cristiano understands enough to not ask anything further.

 

.

 

“The build-up always takes longer.” and Sergio is (from what he can gather) absolutely shamelessly talking about sex, and Fabio just doesn’t have the heart for it, really. He keeps retying his laces and hoping this isn’t a new pre-game habit of his.

But- “It’s like that for everything, though, isn’t it?” Cristiano asks, not looking at Sergio but guaranteeing that everyone’s head turns towards him. “I mean, like, during a game, a goal ends in a second. The build-up sometimes takes minutes. Isn’t that, like, the exact same?” and then he looks, only not at everyone. “A fire. It takes so long to light it up and then one swipe of air and it’s over. A relationship.” A pause. Cristiano looks. “A fire and a goal, really. It takes, what? Two words to end it?” he laughs, shaking his head. “ _Ai, caralho,_ let’s just go out there.”

No one looks at Fabio as they leave, and he’s grateful. Or horrified. Both.

 

.

 

It’s when the world cup is over and the rumors turn to headlines that Cristiano sits beside him on the bus, a hunched back and fiddling hands, a portuguese newspaper in his hand.

“Chelsea?” he asks, neutral and packed. Fabio tightens his hand on the seat.

“Manchester.” He replies. “I think. Or maybe I won’t leave at all. I don’t know.”

“You don’t care?”

“Of course I care,” he spits a little too harshly, and Cristiano smiles, the fucker. “You know I care.”

“Yeah.” He slaps the paper on his leg and goes to stand up- but- “Look.”

Fabio does. The bus empties for two seconds. “Do you want me to say it?”

Cristiano says _yes_ before he can think (this doesn’t happen).

“Maybe if we keep winning and smiling and staring no one will know, but I will. She will. So just know that whatever you think is probably true- shit, I definitely- yes. But we don’t live in a world where we can say it, do we?”

 

.

 

They don’t. When they lose, Cristiano fucks him as slowly as he can for the last time. Fabio wonders if an epic love story can be stained by two horrible, selfish hearts.

“I-“

“I know.”

(Words aren’t always important.)

**Author's Note:**

> So Fabiano pretty much took over my life at some point. THE REAL OTP OK


End file.
